Content moderators at YouTube, Facebook, Twitter see the worst of the web — and suffer silently

First as a contractor for YouTube and then for Twitter, he worked on a high-up floor of a mall in this traffic-clogged Asian capital, where he spent up to nine hours each day weighing questions about the details in those images. He made decisions about whether a child’s genitals were being touched accidentally or on purpose, or whether a knife slashing someone’s neck depicted a real-life killing — and if such content should be allowed online.

He’s still haunted by what he saw. Today, entering a tall building triggers flashbacks to the suicides he reviewed, causing him to entertain the possibility of jumping. At night, he Googles footage of bestiality and incest — material he was never exposed to before but now is ashamed that he is drawn to. For the last year, he has visited a mall chapel every week, where he works with a church brother to ask God to “white out” those images from his memory.

“I know it’s not normal, but now everything is normalized,” said the 33-year-old, using only his first name because of a confidentiality agreement he signed when he took the job.